


Stay

by threedays



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Good Parent Jim "Chief" Hopper, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-18 11:18:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19333477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threedays/pseuds/threedays
Summary: Hopper comes home to find Eleven standing on the porch in broad daylight, in the cold, without any shoes or any regard for the "Don't Be Stupid" rules. A conversation ensues.





	Stay

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: There's nothing graphic, but this story touches on themes of suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts. The timeline here is loose. This could be set almost any time during El's long stay at the cabin.

She knows what “stir” is. That’s a thing that sometimes used to happen in a science lab. And she knows what “crazy” is. Looking back, she supposes that was also a thing that happened, though it wasn’t ever called that, in her old life.

 

But neither definition makes sense now that Hopper stands in front of her, at an angle, running his hands through his worn hair, then letting them drop to his sides,  then almost putting them on his hips, then stuffing them in his pockets. She takes in every nervous motion while she waits, equally nervous. She’s been here long enough to know he’s not going to hurt her, but knowing and _knowing_ are two separate things, though she doesn’t have enough language to explain even to herself why that’s the case.

 

“I _know_ you’re stir-crazy,” he repeats, forcing something into his voice that would pass for softness, except you can’t force softness and have it be real. A moment ago he sounded angry and her heartrate has yet to slow. “But, goddammit, El, you have to, you have to _think!_ ”

 

She feels her answer in her gut, but it takes several frustrating seconds to figure out the words that match, so that when she finally speaks, it’s through a throat that’s closing up, and her voice comes out broken and more upset than she means it to. “All I do,” she says.

 

“What?”

 

“ _Think._ Is all I do.”

 

“Well, if you spent a little less time thinking about the Wheeler kid and how to give me gray hairs, and a little more time thinking about how _not to get captured by crazy government scientists and dragged back to captivity,_ we might be onto something!” The anger is back, or something like it only a little bit different. She doesn’t have the word. And his mention of crazy government scientists has kicked her heartrate back up into the danger zone. The light nearest Hopper dims with a buzz. “Oh, don’t you start that shit,” he grouses, still on a roll.

 

A beat later, he seems to realize that she hasn’t meant to start anything, that she’s standing dead still with her arms out a few inches from her sides for leverage, fists clenched so tight she’s shaking with the effort, trying _not_ to start that shit.

 

“Fuck.” He swears. Again. A third time for measure. Then the fight goes out of him. “Goddammit, El. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean – Look, kid. They’re not going to capture you, I won’t let them.”

 

“You said –”

 

“I said a bunch of stupid shit, let’s just rewind a minute, okay? Stir-crazy. That’s where we were. You’re stir-crazy and you’re not thinking clearly about the consequences before you do shit like going out in broad daylight.”

 

She knows stir-fry, and that Joyce Byers should never be permitted to attempt to cook it. And she knows horse-crazy, because of Lucas’s little sister and her absurd number of tiny plastic ponies. But something still isn’t adding up.

 

“What’s … _stir-crazy?”_

Hop sighs, and Eleven feels defeat and shame all the way into her toes. He’s tired of explaining the world to her. Of course he is. She’s _thirteen._ Her friends toss words around like “demogorgon” and she doesn’t know “stir-crazy.”

 

“It means you’re cooped up here.” Hop sinks back onto the couch, letting his hand find his forehead for just a moment before he looks up at El. She’s scared, but she meets his gaze because she’s _tough_ and _brave_ and at least one other word-of-the-day she’s having trouble calling up right now. But now that the anger’s gone out of Hop, it’s gone completely. He just looks tired. And sad. And sorry.

 

“Cooped up,” she repeats, desperate to get this one without having to disappoint him by asking. “Like a chicken coop?” She watches Little House, so she knows that’s a thing.

 

Hop chuckles once. “Something like that, yeah. A cage. A space too small for you to be stuck all the time.”

 

She waits. He once told her she can wait out an awkward silence better than anyone. He didn’t mean it as a good thing then, but she’s glad of it now. Hopper looks like he’s struggling to find words the way she so often has to.

 

When he looks up, it’s to pat the seat next to him. “Come. Sit.”

 

It’s taken her a while to figure out that she doesn’t have to follow his orders. And then a little longer than that to figure out that it’s okay if she follows his orders _sometimes._ And, finally, one morning it occurred to her that she gets to _choose_ whether to follow his orders.

 

In the lab, she had few choices, and even fewer good ones. Sometimes there weren’t any good ones at all. Sometimes the choice was to follow orders even though they were _terrible_ and _scary_ and they _hurt_ , or to rebel and face a punishment even more terrible and scary and painful. Still, sometimes she chose rebellion, because it was a choice and it was hers and making choices mattered even when they all _sucked._ Making choices for herself meant that alongside the fear and the dread and the sick feeling in her stomach that she got thinking about what punishment would come next, there was a smudge of satisfaction. _Smudge._ She knew that one. Hop was always telling it to her and indicating on his own face where she needed to wipe off the syrup or the blood.

 

“Come” and “sit” are orders, and she has a choice whether to follow them. But when she examines her reaction to the words, she realizes she _wants_ to sit, and so she does, leaving a safe amount of space between herself and Chief Hopper.

 

“Look, it’s not fair that you’re stuck inside all the time, okay? I get it. You were held captive in that hellhole for over a decade, and now that you’re free, you’re still not free, because you’re _cooped up._ And you’re going _stir-crazy._ And that makes it seem worth it to make dangerous decisions. But you cannot – you _cannot –_ go outside in the daylight, kid.  And you definitely can’t _leave,_ not by yourself, not now. Do you understand?”

 

She sorts through his words. She doesn’t know _hellhole,_ but she can figure it out. She knows _decade_ and even that deca means ten, thanks to the guys with their game dice. And boy, does she ever know _dangerous._ She understands enough of the words to follow his meaning. What she doesn’t understand is his tone. Stretched and cracking. Forced through a throat that’s closing up. She recognizes it, but it usually belongs to her, not to him.

 

“Cry?” she asks. She knows enough words to ask in a sentence, but it takes too long to sort out word order and verb tense and she wants to ask before she loses her nerve.

 

He’s not crying, but he doesn’t deny what she’s asking. Instead, he only says, “I need you to stay safe.”

 

“You need me to stay … _cooped up_?”

 

He laughs sadly, which isn’t something the dictionary definition of either word makes it seem like you can do. “Yeah, kiddo. I need you to stay cooped up just a little bit longer.”

 

“I wasn’t leaving,” she says when the stretch of couch between them starts to make her feel alone. It seems important that he know that. She doesn’t want him to think she was trying to go away. “I was …”

 

But then she stops and blows through her lips in frustration. There can’t possibly be words for this in the dictionary. She doesn’t have any way to explain to Hop that she – that she –

 

“I wanted to go,” she says in a tiny, tiny voice, as if she’s admitting something terrible.

 

She doesn’t miss his sharp intake of breath, his hurt feelings, even though he smothers it quickly. “Of course you did, you’ve been stuck here, going out of your mind with –”

 

“No.” She fixes him with a look that stills him so completely, she suddenly worries she’s accidentally used her powers to hold him there. But when she breaks the contact, fidgets and looks away, he doesn’t move. “Not like that.”

 

“I’m not following, kid.”

 

Even if she could sort out the words, she isn’t sure she could say them to Hop, who, for reasons she doesn’t understand, has made it his personal mission to keep her breathing. It seems ungrateful and wrong to tell him that before she went outside, she wasn’t feeling _stir-crazy_ or _cooped up_ or anything else of the sort. That she was feeling _done._ So done with the choices she didn’t have, with all the ways other people controlled her life. She was so exhausted that it physically hurt. It was hard to breathe. She couldn’t even cry. She couldn’t go on another day like this, scared and caged, and terrified of messing up because messing up would mean even more scared and caged by the bad men. She had to do something, she had to take action, she had to make a choice even if they all _sucked._

 

The images came then, in her head. Terrifying, fully-formed images like something from the TV, images of all the gruesome ways her powers could free her from the world. Could rid the world of her. It wouldn’t have to hurt. She could just be done. Done sounded so much better than caged.

 

“I didn’t want to go, I wanted to – I wanted to _be_ gone.”

 

Another breath, this one slower. Still, Hop waits. He isn’t good at it and the couch cushion will never be the same where he’s picking at it and she’s pretty sure he’s biting the inside of his cheek to keep from saying anything, but he waits. Waits while she sorts through the terror that had washed over her when she realized what she was thinking. What the images were telling her to do.

 

Instead of dying, she’d screamed. And screamed and screamed while the lights went wild until, instead of _done,_ of _nothing,_ there was anger. Sharp, hot, _alive_ anger at all the ways she was trapped. And her mind reached out and the locks fell away and the door swung open and everything _stopped._ And outside, there was sun.

 

There has to be a word, or maybe a phrase, that will make it make sense. She thinks about how she felt when she stepped outside, barefoot on a worn wooden step with the cold air on her face. She thinks about how her heartrate slowed and so did the puffs of breath she couldn’t stop watching in wonder because breath wasn’t supposed to be visible. How surprising and beautiful life was outside the lab. How many, many ways it could capture her attention with something new to see. She thinks about the difference in the air when she moved from the shaded top step to the next one down, allowing herself to stand in the sun. She could feel it on her shoulders like a gift. She remembers counting down from thirty, promising herself to go back in by six, to have the door locked by zero.  

 

Hop had walked into view at eleven.

 

The feelings are there, the gut-deep understanding of why it mattered so much half an hour ago that she stand on a porch step without her shoes for twenty-four seconds in the sunlight. But she cannot begin to match her what her stomach is saying with any of the dictionary words. Instead, she scoots closer to Hop across the couch until she can lay her hand next to his, so close they can feel each other’s warmth even though they’re not touching.

 

“I wasn’t trying to leave,” she tells him. “I was trying to _stay.”_

 


End file.
